Gwennie and Marigold hardly knew what had happened. There had been a noise like a gun-shot - and they were standing in the middle of the dining-room looking wildly at each other. There was not much blueberry wine left in that bottle. The rest of it was on the ceiling - on the walls - on the new curtains - on Salome's dress - on the blue bird centrepiece - on Gwennie's face - on Marigold's pretty pink linen dress! Gwennie had learned something she had never known before about blueberry wine. And if thrills were what she was after, she had had enough in one moment to last several weeks.
For an instant she stood in dismay. Then she seized Marigold's hand. "Come quick," she hissed, "get that dress off - get something on - hurry."
Marigold let herself be whisked upstairs. What dreadful thing had happened? Blueberry stains never came out, she had heard Salome say. But Gwennie gave her no time to think. The stained dress was dragged off and thrown into the closet - Marigold's old tan one was thrown over her head - Gwennie wiped the blueberry wine off her face with one of Mother's towels. There were some spots on her dress, too, but that did not matter.
"Come," she said imperiously, snatching Marigold's hand.
"Where are we going?" gasped Marigold as they tore down the road.
"ANYWHERE. We've got to vamoose until they get over that dining- room. They'd kill us if they saw us when they see IT. We'll stay away till evening. Their fit will be over by then and maybe we'll get off with whole hides. But I'd like to be a fly on the ceiling when Grandmother sees that room."
"We can't stay away all day. We've nothing to eat," groaned Marigold.
"We'll eat berries and roots - and things," said Gwennie. "We'll be Gipsies and live in the woods. Come to think of it, it will be fun."
"Will you take a drive," said a voice above them.
It was Mr. Abel Derusha, the Weed Man, on his double-seated wagon, bareheaded as always, with his dog Buttons beside him!
2
The Weed Man was one of the few romantic personages the country around the harbour could boast. He lived somewhere up at the Head but was well known all over the surrounding communities - at least people thought they knew him well, whereas perhaps nobody really knew him at all.
In his youth Abel Derusha had gone to college and studied for the ministry. Then that was given up. There was a heresy hunt and the result was that Abel Derusha came home, lived at the Head with his old-maid sister Tabby and set up his weed-wagon. Soon he was known as the "Weed Man." In summer he drove all over the Island gathering medicinal plants and herbs and selling them and the decoctions he made from them. He made only a pittance by it. But he and Tabby had enough to live on, and Abel Derusha's weed-fad was little more than an excuse to live in the open. Marigold thought him very "int'resting" and often felt that it would be a delightful thing to drive about with him on his red wagon. She always felt the strange charm of his personality though she knew little of his history - just what she had heard Salome say to Mrs. Kemp one day.
"Abel Derusha always took things easy. Never seemed to worry over trials and disappointments as most folks do. Seems to me that as long as he can wander over the country hunting weeds and talking to that old red dog of his as if it was a human being he don't care how the world wags on. Didn't even worry when they put him out of the ministry. Said God was in the woods as well as any church. He favours his mother's people, the Courteloes. Sort of shiftless and dreamy. All born with hang-nails on their heels. The Derushas were all ashamed of him. 'Tisn't the way to get on in the world."
No, good and worthy Salome. It is not the way to get on in your world, but there may be other worlds where getting on is estimated by different standards, and Abel Derusha lived in one of these - a world far beyond the ken of the thrifty Harbour farmers. Marigold knew that world, though she knew it didn't do to live in it ALL the time as Abel did. Though you were very happy there. Abel Derusha was the happiest person she knew.
He had a face so short it positively looked square, a long, rippling, silky red beard and an odd, spiky, truculent moustache that didn't seem to belong to the beard at all. There was no doubt he was ugly, but Marigold had always thought it was a nice kind of ugliness. He had beautiful clear blue eyes that told he had kept the child-heart. The red squirrels would come to him in the woods and he called all the dogs in the country by their first name. When he came to Cloud of Spruce - which he did not always do, being "pernickety" in regard to his ports of call - he sat in his red wagon and talked with Lazarre and Salome and Mother and Grandmother by the hour, if they would linger to talk with him, though he would never enter the house. After he had gone Lazarre would shrug his shoulders and say contemptuously,
"Dat man, he's crack." Whereat Salome would inform Lazarre, by way of standing by her race, that Abel Derusha had forgotten more than he, the said Lazarre, ever knew. He had promised once to take Marigold for a drive with him and Marigold hankered after it, though she knew she would never be let go. And now here she and Gwennie were out to do as they liked for a whole day and here was the Weed Man offering them a drive.
"Sure," said Gwennie promptly. But Marigold, in spite of her secret wishes, hung back.
"Where are you going?"
"Anywhere - anywhere," said Abel easily. "I'm just poking along to- day - just poking along, thinking how I'd have made the world if I HAD made it. And if you two small skeesicks want to come along why just come."
"But they wouldn't know what had happened to us at home," said Marigold doubtfully.
"They'll know what has happened to the dining-room," giggled Gwen. "Come on now, Marigold. Be a sport."
"Marigold's right," said the Weed Man. "Doesn't do to worry folks who worry. I never worry myself. Here's Jim Donkin coming along. I'll ask him to drop over to Cloud of Spruce and tell the folks you've come for a day with me. We'll get our dinners somewhere along the road and we'll go home to my place for supper, and I'll bring you back in the evening. How's that?"
Nobody but the Weed Man would have proposed such a plan. But Abel didn't see any reason if the girls wanted a drive why they shouldn't have it on a day God had made specially for people who wanted to be out. Gwennie had quite made up her mind to go and Marigold couldn't help thinking it would be very int'resting.
So Jim Donkin was asked to take the word to Cloud of Spruce, and Marigold and Gwennie were in the back seat of the red wagon, amid fragrant bundles of Abel's harvest, bowling along the road, quite delighted with themselves. Marigold resolved to forget the catastrophe of the blueberry wine. It had been Gwen's doings, anyway. They wouldn't kill Gwen because she was a visitor and meanwhile here was a whole golden day, with the very air seeming alive, flung into their laps as a gift. Perhaps Marigold had a spice of Uncle Klon's wanderlust in her. At any rate the prospect of driving about with the Weed Man filled her with secret delight. She had always known she would like the Weed Man.
"What road are you going to take?" demanded Gwen.
"Whatever road pleases me," said the Weed Man, looking disdainfully at a car that passed. "Look at that critter insulting the daylight. I've no use at all for them. Nor your aeroplanes. If God had meant us to fly He'd have given us wings."
"Did God mean you to drive this poor old horse when He gave you legs?" said Gwen pertly.
"Yes, when He gave him four legs to my two," was the retort. Abel was so well pleased with himself that he chuckled for a mile. Then he turned into a red side road, narrow and woodsy, with daisies blowing by the longer fences, little pole-gates under the spruces, stone dykes overgrown with things he loved to rifle, looping brooks and grassy fields girdled by woods. It was all very dear and remote and lovely and the Weed Man told them tales of every kink and turn, talking sometimes like the educated man he really was and sometimes lapsing into the vernacular of his childhood.